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The design considerations section seems out of place in this page... perhaps this information should be moved to the shipbuilding page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Confuciou ( talk • contribs) 03:31, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
At the end of the Nomenclature section, the article states, "Ship (along with nation) is an English word that has retained a female grammatical gender in some usages, which allows it sometimes to be referred to as a she without being of female natural gender.[13] However, Wiktionary traces it back through Middle English schip, Old English skip, Proto-West-Germanic *skip, and Proto-Germanic *skipą, all of which were neuter. I think a better explanation is needed as to why ships (and some other vehicles) are sometimes treated as feminine.
-- Solo Owl 03:54, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
I am alarmed by the edit
[1] by
User:HopsonRoad (and subsequent edits).
(1) The definition of a ship (as in full-rigged ship) is all about the rig. There is no consideration of the size of the hull. Therefore you have examples of brigs which are bigger than ships. I can dig out a reference for that given time, but this problem needs fixing a.s.a.p.
(2) There is no requirement for a ship to have a bowsprit. They (probably) invariably do, but the definition is all about the square rigged masts.
(3) The reference given to support this is 159 years old. The more modern reference (Jenny Bennett, Sailing Rigs, an Illustrated Guide) is right up to date, written by someone with excellent credentials, and relies on equally impressive references. Note that the 159 year old ref was from a time when the terminology was adjusting to steam vessels and, I suggest, the nautical dictionary writer was struggling with the developing language.
(4) Leaving the text as it is directly contradicts the reference given (Bennett) - if you don't like the text supported by Bennett, at least delete the reference, because otherwise Wikipedia is misrepresenting that author.
ThoughtIdRetired (
talk)
21:36, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
I have gone ahead and substituted a paragraph based on the above suggestion. It has been carefully fine-tuned for accuracy and supportability from sources. I have kept the 3 references, despite laying the edit open to criticism as being over-cited. The logic is that both Underhill and Bennett give the "3 square-rigged masts" definition, but Underhill, despite still being the undisputed authority on the subject, is somewhat old. Therefore using Bennett (who clearly bases her remarks on Underhill) gives modern validation to the older work. Just citing Bennett would conceal from the reader the very useful definitive source that Underhill represents. Palmer is there to support the generalist definition of ship that sits alongside the technical one. The fact that the generalist definition - a large sea-going vessel - is used even in the age of sail is not fully supported by an RS (yet another ref would be a problem?), but you can find this usage in Shakespeare, old newspapers, etc. Incidentally, "full-rigged ship" goes back to the 1860s, per OED and also old newspapers.
The only question in my mind is whether the extensive usage of referring to vessels by their rigs needs to be illustrated by one of the open-source old newspapers. It is hard to explain how this worked - by analogy one can show what we do with cars: hatchback, sedan, SUV, etc, but that is not really an encyclopaedic style.
There probably also needs to be a sentence in the lead that says "During the age of sail, the word "ship" usually meant a vessel that was ship-rigged – that is: square-rigged on all of three or more masts." But I am thinking that we are building this wall one brick at a time. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 08:04, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
References
Hi ThoughtIdRetired, you recently put, "For most of the age of sail, the word "ship" often denoted that a vessel was ship-rigged – that is: square-rigged on all of three or more masts. This ambiguity can usually (but not always) be resolved from the context" into the article. Is this true? Is that a citable assertion?
Would it not be more prudent to say, "During the age of sail, ship acquired a specific connotation among mariners as a full-rigged ship with square-rigged sails on all of three or more masts, which distinguished it from vessels with other sail plans and their own specific nautical names." Cheers, HopsonRoad ( talk) 18:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
During the age of sail, ship acquired a specific connotation among mariners as a full-rigged ship with square-rigged sails on all of three or more masts, which distinguished it from vessels with other sail plans and their own specific nautical names.(a) I think sources do not show that the rig-specific definition is confined to mariners. It is used by most people in the broader maritime world and its associated commercial spheres. Otherwise it would not be used, for instance, by those in the insurance world when compiling Lloyd's Register of Shipping, nor by the merchants who charter ships or consign cargoes in them, together with the journalists who compile the commercial pages of newspapers. (Clearly Lloyd's Register and the many, many commercial pages in newspapers are their own RSs on this – interesting Lloyd's Register of Shipping is the most punctilious on not using "ship" when they mean "vessel", certainly in the issues that I have browsed recently. (Lloyd's Register has a lot more in it than a list of vessels - there is quite a lot of non-list content at the beginning.)) (b) I am not sure that
...acquired a specific connotation..fits. It is a precise definition - see sources like Underhill and Bennett for this (and Richard Henry Dana in his The Seaman's Friend, particularly in the early part of the book, plate IV explanation). "connotation" does not seem to make this clear.
The section "Asian developments" seems to be unsupported by references, particularly the references given: for instance "The first sea-going sailing ships were developed by the Austronesian peoples from what is now Taiwan." None of the three references given at the end of that paragraph specifically state this. Since it is a major statement of fact, unless someone can promptly come up with an authoritative source that supports this, much of this text should be deleted.
There are other problems in this section: "Austronesian rigs were distinctive in that they had spars supporting both the upper and lower edges of the sails....". Whilst this is broadly true, in a section on the sailing rigs of early and pre-history, it is a huge omission to not mention that Egyptian sailing vessels had a yard and a boom on their square sails - something that can be clearly seen in many of the surviving contemporary illustrations that have survived (and are discussed in chapter 2 of Casson's Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World.) [1]
The section "Mediterranean developments" completely ignores the trade in grain that supported the major cities of this time. Quite simply, the classical era cities (e.g. Rome) could not have existed without deliveries of grain by ship. Casson's paper The Grain Trade of the Hellenistic World [3] makes this point for part of that time period. There are many merchant ship wrecks in the Mediterranean that are evidence of this trade, as well as the extensive written records that document it. Surely some mention is needed.
The article does not cover 1200 BC to 1300 AD – a quite impressive gap in which we saw, at a minimum, the development of the Viking longship and the Cog (ship). Nor is the extensive trade in wine from (present-day) France to England mentioned – a trade that gave us the word ton for measuring the size of ships. This started in the article's 2,500 year time gap with the Romans, then arguably had a pause with the collapse of the Roman Empire and then was going strong from about 1000 AD onwards. [2]
There is probably a lot more to comment on, but this is a start. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 13:45, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
References
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Ship article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1,
2,
3Auto-archiving period: 90 days
![]() |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The design considerations section seems out of place in this page... perhaps this information should be moved to the shipbuilding page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Confuciou ( talk • contribs) 03:31, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
At the end of the Nomenclature section, the article states, "Ship (along with nation) is an English word that has retained a female grammatical gender in some usages, which allows it sometimes to be referred to as a she without being of female natural gender.[13] However, Wiktionary traces it back through Middle English schip, Old English skip, Proto-West-Germanic *skip, and Proto-Germanic *skipą, all of which were neuter. I think a better explanation is needed as to why ships (and some other vehicles) are sometimes treated as feminine.
-- Solo Owl 03:54, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
I am alarmed by the edit
[1] by
User:HopsonRoad (and subsequent edits).
(1) The definition of a ship (as in full-rigged ship) is all about the rig. There is no consideration of the size of the hull. Therefore you have examples of brigs which are bigger than ships. I can dig out a reference for that given time, but this problem needs fixing a.s.a.p.
(2) There is no requirement for a ship to have a bowsprit. They (probably) invariably do, but the definition is all about the square rigged masts.
(3) The reference given to support this is 159 years old. The more modern reference (Jenny Bennett, Sailing Rigs, an Illustrated Guide) is right up to date, written by someone with excellent credentials, and relies on equally impressive references. Note that the 159 year old ref was from a time when the terminology was adjusting to steam vessels and, I suggest, the nautical dictionary writer was struggling with the developing language.
(4) Leaving the text as it is directly contradicts the reference given (Bennett) - if you don't like the text supported by Bennett, at least delete the reference, because otherwise Wikipedia is misrepresenting that author.
ThoughtIdRetired (
talk)
21:36, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
I have gone ahead and substituted a paragraph based on the above suggestion. It has been carefully fine-tuned for accuracy and supportability from sources. I have kept the 3 references, despite laying the edit open to criticism as being over-cited. The logic is that both Underhill and Bennett give the "3 square-rigged masts" definition, but Underhill, despite still being the undisputed authority on the subject, is somewhat old. Therefore using Bennett (who clearly bases her remarks on Underhill) gives modern validation to the older work. Just citing Bennett would conceal from the reader the very useful definitive source that Underhill represents. Palmer is there to support the generalist definition of ship that sits alongside the technical one. The fact that the generalist definition - a large sea-going vessel - is used even in the age of sail is not fully supported by an RS (yet another ref would be a problem?), but you can find this usage in Shakespeare, old newspapers, etc. Incidentally, "full-rigged ship" goes back to the 1860s, per OED and also old newspapers.
The only question in my mind is whether the extensive usage of referring to vessels by their rigs needs to be illustrated by one of the open-source old newspapers. It is hard to explain how this worked - by analogy one can show what we do with cars: hatchback, sedan, SUV, etc, but that is not really an encyclopaedic style.
There probably also needs to be a sentence in the lead that says "During the age of sail, the word "ship" usually meant a vessel that was ship-rigged – that is: square-rigged on all of three or more masts." But I am thinking that we are building this wall one brick at a time. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 08:04, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
References
Hi ThoughtIdRetired, you recently put, "For most of the age of sail, the word "ship" often denoted that a vessel was ship-rigged – that is: square-rigged on all of three or more masts. This ambiguity can usually (but not always) be resolved from the context" into the article. Is this true? Is that a citable assertion?
Would it not be more prudent to say, "During the age of sail, ship acquired a specific connotation among mariners as a full-rigged ship with square-rigged sails on all of three or more masts, which distinguished it from vessels with other sail plans and their own specific nautical names." Cheers, HopsonRoad ( talk) 18:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
During the age of sail, ship acquired a specific connotation among mariners as a full-rigged ship with square-rigged sails on all of three or more masts, which distinguished it from vessels with other sail plans and their own specific nautical names.(a) I think sources do not show that the rig-specific definition is confined to mariners. It is used by most people in the broader maritime world and its associated commercial spheres. Otherwise it would not be used, for instance, by those in the insurance world when compiling Lloyd's Register of Shipping, nor by the merchants who charter ships or consign cargoes in them, together with the journalists who compile the commercial pages of newspapers. (Clearly Lloyd's Register and the many, many commercial pages in newspapers are their own RSs on this – interesting Lloyd's Register of Shipping is the most punctilious on not using "ship" when they mean "vessel", certainly in the issues that I have browsed recently. (Lloyd's Register has a lot more in it than a list of vessels - there is quite a lot of non-list content at the beginning.)) (b) I am not sure that
...acquired a specific connotation..fits. It is a precise definition - see sources like Underhill and Bennett for this (and Richard Henry Dana in his The Seaman's Friend, particularly in the early part of the book, plate IV explanation). "connotation" does not seem to make this clear.
The section "Asian developments" seems to be unsupported by references, particularly the references given: for instance "The first sea-going sailing ships were developed by the Austronesian peoples from what is now Taiwan." None of the three references given at the end of that paragraph specifically state this. Since it is a major statement of fact, unless someone can promptly come up with an authoritative source that supports this, much of this text should be deleted.
There are other problems in this section: "Austronesian rigs were distinctive in that they had spars supporting both the upper and lower edges of the sails....". Whilst this is broadly true, in a section on the sailing rigs of early and pre-history, it is a huge omission to not mention that Egyptian sailing vessels had a yard and a boom on their square sails - something that can be clearly seen in many of the surviving contemporary illustrations that have survived (and are discussed in chapter 2 of Casson's Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World.) [1]
The section "Mediterranean developments" completely ignores the trade in grain that supported the major cities of this time. Quite simply, the classical era cities (e.g. Rome) could not have existed without deliveries of grain by ship. Casson's paper The Grain Trade of the Hellenistic World [3] makes this point for part of that time period. There are many merchant ship wrecks in the Mediterranean that are evidence of this trade, as well as the extensive written records that document it. Surely some mention is needed.
The article does not cover 1200 BC to 1300 AD – a quite impressive gap in which we saw, at a minimum, the development of the Viking longship and the Cog (ship). Nor is the extensive trade in wine from (present-day) France to England mentioned – a trade that gave us the word ton for measuring the size of ships. This started in the article's 2,500 year time gap with the Romans, then arguably had a pause with the collapse of the Roman Empire and then was going strong from about 1000 AD onwards. [2]
There is probably a lot more to comment on, but this is a start. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 13:45, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
References
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)